I Followed Actor Steven Yuen on Twitter and Nothing Happened

Some time in the pre-pandemic era of social media, my friend Tim decided he was going to follow actor Armie Hammer on Twitter. He liked the handsome young actor from The Social Network and Call Me By Your Name and he thought it might be fun to see what the actor revealed about himself on Social Media. It turned out to be a lot. Though what Hammer was doing to the women he encountered was done in DM's and not open to the public at that time, Tim still found himself in a weird rabbit hole as Armie Hammer, even before his being outed as a sexual predator, is pretty weird. 

That got me thinking, maybe if I found a celebrity I might find my own bizarre rabbit hole of weird behavior. Thus, I decided to follow the first random celebrity that the Twitter algorithms would recommend to me. The first name on the list was the former co-star of The Walking Dead and the recent co-star of the Oscar winning film, Minari. I am a big fan of Steven Yuen, aware of him despite not having watched a single moment of his television breakthrough in The Walking Dead. So, where did this rabbit hole take me? Read along to find out the terrifying but true details of Steven Yuen on Twitter. 

Steven Yuen Spends Very Little Time Tweeting

If you were to tell me that Steven Yuen's Twitter was unquestionably a Bot, I would believe you. Yeah, Steven Yuen, it turns out, doesn't do much on social media. Though he allegedly was an early adopter to Twitter, his bio indicates that Yuen joined the platform in 2008, Yuen did not send his first tweet until January of 2021. That first Tweet was a random and slightly insufferable Retweet of the Kurt Vonnegut Quote bot: "There's only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you've got to be kind." 

Often, individuals trying out social media for the first time will use a quote from a famous intellectual as a way of setting expectations for those who choose to follow them. People like Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, Gandhi, are still represented on Twitter despite their lives pre-dating the launch of the site. Associating yourself with famous author A looks good on Social Media, doesn't require vetting by your publicist, and, hopefully, creates an association between you-the Re-Tweeter- and the highly respected and well thought of author portrayed in the ReTweet. I know this because, it's what I did as well. 

Click here for my full length article at Geeks.media

Movie Review Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You (2018) 

Directed by Boots Riley

Written by Boots Riley 

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Danny Glover, Terry Crews, Patton Oswalt, Armie Hammer, David Cross, Steven Yuen, Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler

Release Date July 6th, 2018

Published July 6th, 2018

Sorry to Bother You is among the most bracing and stupefying movies of this century. Directed by Boots Riley, no film aside from perhaps Get Out, has felt this alive in this moment of our shared American history. This absurdist masterpiece about identity politics, corporate greed, liberal guilt and moral licensing, works on so many unique levels of satire it can be hard to keep up with but it’s damn sure worth trying to keep up with.

Sorry to Bother You stars LaKeith Stanfield, a star of the aforementioned Get Out along with equally of the moment series Atlanta on FX. Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a lean and hungry young man, quite literally hungry, he has almost no money, who we meet as he attempts to lie himself into a new job. Cassius is applying to work at a telemarketing firm and once hired he finds himself struggling to make sales.

Then, an older telemarketer, Langston (Danny Glover), gives Cash some very important advice, use your white voice. Here’s where the transgressive kick of Sorry to Bother You kicks in. Immediately, Langston gets on the phone and the surreal voice of Steve Buscemi is coming out of the mouth of Danny Glover. Soon, Cash gives his white voice a shot and he’s a natural with the voice of David Cross laying over that of LaKeith Stanfield.

This is the first layer of the identity politics satire at play in Sorry to Bother You. It gets a great deal more intense after that, after Cash realizes how powerful he can be with his ultra-confident white voice. Soon, Cash is promoted to Power Caller and is working in a pampered office with a six figure salary while his friends, including Union organizer, Squeeze (Steven Yuen) and girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson) are left behind to try and fight for more pay without the power of Cash’s earning power to help their position.

Cash’s rise through the ranks is rapid and he soon catches the attention of the company’s biggest client, a slave labor corporation known as WorryFree. WorryFree CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) is a psychotic mashup of Martin Shkrelli and Elon Musk, with just a dash of Jeff Bezos’ union busting egotism. Whether intentional or not, the notion of Worryfree signing workers to lifetime contracts that offer them room and board in exchange for permanent employment feels like a shot at Bezos and the conditions he’s rumored to have created for Amazon warehouse workers.

Then again, the way it is framed, the corporate satire could play off of any number of modern, soulless, labor busting CEOs. Where this satire winds up is a stunner of transgressive ideas that are terrifyingly and yet hilariously staged. Sorry to Bother You is wildly unpredictable  and boldly weird, a refreshingly artful and funny mix. A scene featuring a party at Lift’s house features one of the most explosive and uncomfortably real scenes I have ever witnessed.

The scene is textbook moral licensing, a concept wherein people, or a group of people, excuse their worst behaviors by doing something they feel is moral or selfless. In this case, allowing Cash into their world gives the white people at Lift’s party, in their minds, the moral license to ask him to demean himself and his race for their amusement and it's okay because they claim he is now one of their peers.

We aren’t finished though with the multiple levels of transgressive satire in Sorry to Bother You. Boots Riley turns social science into a gorgeous work of art. With an incredible cast that also includes a stellar performance by Tessa Thompson and a horrifyingly pitch perfect villain turn from Armie Hammer who combines the worst qualities of the billionaire class and amps them with eye-bulging energy.

President Calvin Coolidge famously said of D.W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation that it was “History written with lightning.” I’m taking that statement away from Griffith’s racist screed and giving it here to Boots Riley Sorry to Bother You. THIS is history written with lightning, just history that is in progress, as we speak. This film is a bolt of lightning to our collective soul, an electrifying and vital work of art.

The more we allow corporate greed to separate itself from moral guidance, the closer we get to Sorry to Bother You. The more we condone or fail to recognize moral licensing, the closer we get to the vision of Sorry to Bother You. We need to recognize these things and Sorry to Bother You is a clarion call to recognize these vital issues and its artfulness is a hilarious and horrifying guide to the kind of moral rot that could be our future if we fail to change.

Identity and politics and satire all in one package, Sorry to Bother You deserves Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Lakeith Stanfield, Best Supporting Actress for Tessa Thompson, Best Supporting Actor for Armie Hammer, Best Director for Boots Riley and Best Screenplay, among other awards. That’s how incredibly brilliant Sorry to Bother You is. I haven’t seen a movie this excitingly, scathingly, bravely, transgressive as this in my life and I am excited this exists.